Before moving on to 1862, Civil War Emancipation takes a last look at 1861, and how the collective will of many humble people thwarted and frustrated the powerful.

In the last months of 1861, top Union officers struggled to control the stream of fugitive slaves seeking refuge within their lines. The problem was aggravated by the fact much of the Union army in late 1861 was encamped in the un-seceded slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Under the terms of August’s Confiscation Act, Unionist slaveholders still had a claim to their human property, but even as some leading federal officers proved sympathetic to loyal slaveholders, they discovered they had to reckon with the collective will of the slaves and ordinary soldiers, which was often at odds with their policies.

Civil War Emancipation has dealt before with this developing situation in its edition of November 5, 2011. It also addressed in a later post Gen. Henry Halleck’s order of November 20, 1861, prohibiting fugitive slaves in Missouri from entering Union lines on the ridiculous grounds that some were Confederate spies. Halleck’s belief that he could with the stroke of a pen exclude Missouri slaves from his lines proved fanciful, as were other Union commanders that tried handle the same problem in a similar fashion.

If there was a serious fault to Cameron’s policy of giving refuge all slaves, putting them to work, and sorting out their status after the war, it was the will of slaveholders–disloyal as well as loyal–who tried to reclaim their human property from Union army camps. Many Union soldiers and officers disliked such efforts and actively obstructed them, even as top Union commanders tried to accommodate slave owners searching for fugitive slaves in the interest of promoting loyalty in the Border States and because they believed African Americans’ presence was disruptive to military disciple.

Union troops frustrating slave owners and their agents received the moral support of abolitionist politicians. Civil War Emancipation in its issue of July 8, 2011 discussed the U.S. House Resolution of July 9, 1861, absolving the Union Army of slave catching. This resolution was not binding, so for the rest of 1861 army policy toward fugitive slaves remained unclear both inside and outside the army. High-ranking commanders, conscious of the strategic importance of the loyal slave states, tended to favor returning/excluding fugitive slaves in army camps to promote Union sentiment, but many junior officers and enlisted men, exposed to haughty slaveholders and clearly abused slaves (who were useful around camp) often sought to frustrate slave catchers.

Abolitionist politicians opposed to the army returning fugitive slaves grew bolder toward the end of 1861. For example, on December 7, 1861, John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, wrote Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, demanding he issue orders to prevent officers from ordering their men to take part in efforts of owners seeking to reclaim their slaves. His letter stated:

Andrew soon afterwards became involved in a testy exchange of letters with Gen. George McClellan, then the Union Army’s commander-in-chief. Andrew had sought to censure a captain in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, who had taken a leading role in returning two African Americans to slavery. McClellan resented Andrew’s interference in the affairs of the now federalized regiment, and did not share the governor’s concern for fugitive slaves.

When Congress came back into session in December 1861, its mood clearly was more supportive of Andrew than McClellan. It issued two resolutions, one (dated December 20) making it harder to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by requiring documentary proof of ownership and the other (dated December 23) prohibiting army officers from returning fugitive slaves (and dismissing them from the army if they did anyway). Both resolutions directed the relevant committees to draft legislation to carry out these aims, and resulting bills which would become law the following spring.

The increasingly abolitionist stance of Congress reflected the growing mood in the North, which saw the war as essentially pointless unless slavery ended, since if it did not another war over slavery would sooner or later break out. Even some elements in the border states warmed to abolition as 1861 drew to a close. A Connecticut man, in Missouri to convince his sister and her family to return North to escape the state’s unrest, wrote Gen. Henry Halleck, on November 30, 1861, complaining that local Unionist home guards in Johnson County led by German-Americans, were intimidating into the local population that favored Halleck’s policies. The letter added:

Of course, probably some of the most effective obstruction of Union commanders like George McClellan and Henry Halleck came from the slaves themselves. Despite efforts to exclude them from Union lines, they kept coming and did what they could to frustrate efforts to remove them from army encampments. Major George E. Waring, commanding the Frémont Hussars, wrote an instructive letter is this regard to his division commander, on December 19, 1861, seeking guidance with his efforts to carry out Halleck’s order to exclude fugitive slaves from Union lines. His letter stated:

Waring’s letter embodied many of the factors at work frustrating efforts of top Union commanders to ignore slavery by excluding the slaves or return them to slavery. This problem would continue into 1862 because the slaves refused to be ignored and the mass of Union officers and soldiers refused to ignore them. Union commanders could issue as many orders as they wished to exclude slaves, but they were futility itself in opposition to the power of the collective will opposing them.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com